Studying Becomes Pleasant with Augmental

“Every student can learn, just not on the same day or in the same way”-
George Evans.

Today, technology is making its way into the educational programs all
over the world, and it’s time to discover a one of a kind technology developed
in Lebanon that will redefine studying.

Paul Barakat Diab, a fifth-year software engineering student at
Université Antonine is building, along with his team, a system that could
revolutionize the way we study in classrooms. With his teammates Elie Nahas and
Marc Asmar, and with the help of their instructor Dr Elie Matta, Augmental Adaptive Learning was
created.

The idea started in February 2016 and has since then come a long way: “We
were thinking about how not all students learn in similar ways. A class can
have different learning styles and levels of comprehension for a same course”, Paul
elaborates. “The teacher cannot help but explain identically to all the
students so we decided to create an application that offers the same content given
in class but in a different display”.

Augmental focuses on three main features: adaptive learning, interactivity and
educational assistance. The application analyses how a student is answering the
questions and what type of content he’s more at ease with. Based on this data,
the student is redirected through the course in the most optimized way. For
example, a student who understands more with images, will receive more visuals during
his studies on the application.

Simultaneously, the teacher receives on his dashboard insights of what
is happening with each student, in real time and he gets notified by the system
when a student needs help. “The one on one help is still there; the teacher is
still assisting the students and teaching them”, the engineering student
assures. However, Augmental is
there to make it more efficient which makes both the student and the teacher
winners!

This useful application is redefining the study of many subjects such as
mathematics or biology: On a 2D picture of a heart, the students can overlap it
with another tablet and the pictures becomes 3D. They will even be able to
rotate it, interact with it, and see annotations and animations. It can also be
useful for the geometry in space courses.

Augmental is also a bot educational assistant, where students can chat so it helps
them with their performance in class by telling them what they should focus on.
It also helps them at home which makes the life of parents a little easier.

Augmental got its first test last April in Collège De La Sagesse Saint
Jean-Maron Ain el Remmeneh, in the 8th grade science classes. The
Augmental team worked closely with the teachers on the content to provide them
with a system which students could use once finished. They were each provided
with a tablet to worked on. The innovative experience got an amazing feedback
from the teachers and the administration, who were given statistics about each
student and the class in general, something truly helpful in the quest to
improve their courses.

Students were also engaged as they showed their excitement during this
test. In fact, 22 students out of 26 were able to finish their course in one
hour versus three hours without the application, while being able to answer all
the questions.

The developers of Augmental hope to be able to target all subjects in
schools and universities, something that could redefine the whole concept of
education nowadays!

This great amount of work was highly supported by the Université
Antonine. “They sponsored us during the BTL accelerate and they helped us buy
tablets for the students. Our instructors at the Faculty of Engineering were
really encouraging us in the technical and pedagogic sides of the project”,
Barakat Diab confirms.

Last November, the team participated in BDL Accelerate, the biggest
conference in the Middle East for the start-ups in Forum de Beirut. Out of 500
start-ups from 52 countries that presented their ideas, 100 were chosen to
participate in the event, and Augmental was among the 20 Lebanese teams that
got the exposure deserved.

We’re wishing them the best of luck for their upcoming projects which
you can check on www.augmental.education!